Nick Park
Nicholas "Nick" Wulstan Park, (6 December 1958), is an English of best known as the creator of and Shaun the Sheep. Park has been nominated for an a total of six times and won four with (1989), (1993), (1995) and (2005). Childhood Park was born on Brookfield Park in in , England and grew up on Greenlands Estate, Preston and later moved to , where his mother still resides. He is the middle child, of five siblings. He was born to Mary Cecilia Ashton (b. 1930), a seamstress and Roger Wulstan Park (b. 1925 d.2004), an architectural photographer. His sister Janet lives in the area still, in .http://www.filmreference.com/film/98/Nick-Park.html He attended Cuthbert Mayne High School (now 's Catholic High School). He grew up with a keen interest in drawing cartoons and as a 13-year old made films with the help of his mother – who was a dressmaker – and her home movie camera and cotton s. He also took after his father, an amateur inventor and would send items – such as a bottle that squeezed out different coloured wools – to . He studied Communication Arts at Sheffield Polytechnic (now ) and then went to the , where he started making the first Wallace and Gromit film, . Hi Career In 1985, he joined the staff of in , where he worked as an animator on commercial products (including the video for 's " ", where he worked on the dance scene involving oven-ready chickens). He also had a part in animating the which featured . Along with all this, he had finally completed and with that in post-production, he made as his contribution to a series of shorts called "Lip Synch". Creature Comforts matched animated zoo animals with a soundtrack of people talking about their homes. The two films were nominated for a host of awards. A Grand Day Out beat Creature Comforts for the award, but it was Creature Comforts that won Park his first . In 1990 Park worked alongside advertising agency GGK to develop a series of highly acclaimed television advertisements for the "Heat Electric" campaign. The are now regarded as among the best advertisements ever shown on British television, as voted (independently) by viewers of the UK's main commercial channels ITV’s Best Ever Adverts. Retrieved 2010-08-07. and .100 Greatest TV Ads. Retrieved 2010-08-07. Two more shorts, (1993) and (1995), followed, both winning Oscars. He then made his first feature-length film, (2000), co-directed with Aardman founder . He also supervised a new series of "Creature Comforts" films for British television in 2003. His second theatrical feature-length film and first feature, , was released on 5 October 2005, and won Best Animated Feature Oscar at the 78th Academy Awards, 6 March 2006. On 10 October 2005, a fire gutted ' archive warehouse. | title = Animation archive up in smoke | date = 10 October 2005 | accessdate = 3 October 2007 }} The fire resulted in the loss of most of Park's creations, including the models and sets used in the movie . Some of the original Wallace and Gromit models and sets, as well as the master prints of the finished films, were elsewhere and survived. Park's most recent work includes a U.S. version of , a weekly television series that was on CBS every Monday evening at 8 p.m. . In the series, Americans were interviewed about a range of subjects. The interviews were lip synced to Aardman animal characters. In September 2007, it was announced that Nick Park had been commissioned to design a bronze statue of Wallace and Gromit, which will be placed in his home town of Preston. | title = Wallace and Gromit statue planned | date = 6 September 2007 | accessdate = 3 October 2007 }} In October 2007 it was announced that the has commissioned another Wallace and Gromit short film to be entitled Trouble at Mill | title = Wallace and Gromit return to TV | date = 3 October 2007 | accessdate = 3 October 2007 }} (retitled later to ). Nick Park has a part of Preston College named after him. The Park Campus which is situated on Moor Park, was named after him owing to the media and animation inside the building. He is the recipient of a gold badge. In February 2011, Park made his first ever appearance, himself as an animated character in episode, " ". His new Willis and Grumble short, Better Gnomes and Gardens borrows elements and themes to Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Lisa Simpson asks Park, in case he does not receive the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film: : : Good luck, Mr. Park. There'd be no shame in losing to you. :Park: Oh, that's very sweet of you. Thank you for saying so. shaking hands, Park's fingers come off :Lisa: Agh! :Park: No worries. I'll just stick 'em back on. I'm more clay than man now. (Note: Willis and Crumble are a parody of Park's characters Wallace and Gromit. Also, stop motion animation is produced by Chiodo Bros. Productions, Inc., not Aardman.) Personal life remarked Park has taken on some attributes of Wallace, just "as dog-owners come to look like their pets", overexpressing himself, possibly as a result of having to show animators how he wants his characters to behave. |date=18 December 2008|accessdate=18 December 2008}} He is a fan of comic and guest-edited the 70th anniversary issue dated 2 August 2008. He also contributed to at the same time, picking his favourite classic stories for the comic reprint magazine's new Classic Choice feature. The character idea for Wallace came from his old English teacher. Wallace wears the same clothes as Park's teacher and has a similar personality. References External links * *U.S. News & World Report interview *Making His Mark in Clay: An Interview with Nick Park'' Nick Park speaks about his influences, on how he uses drawing to tell a story and tells us what it was like to bring Wallace and Gromit to the big screen.'' Category:Production Staff